First Camping Trip

Our first camping trip in Israel!  We went camping with one other family at the Mishmar HaCarmel campsite.  It’s on top of the Carmel mountains near Haifa.  The campsite was in a beautiful pine forest very similar to the campgrounds we’ve been to in the Arizona mountains.  Instead of reserving a specific numbered campsite as in the US, you just reserve a general space.  There is a single parking lot and then you just walk around the campsite and pick a spot to pitch your tent. The official check-in time was 3PM and we arrived around 4PM.  But the other family we were with arrived early at 1:30PM.  The guy working there was still cleaning things up.  He told them they weren’t supposed to be there until 3, but that he’d let them in anyway.  He showed them the most popular area which was on the edge of the campgrounds with a great view of the mountain ridges and the sea in the distance.  It had the most shade and a breeze off the edge of the mountain.

People were just filtering in as we arrived.  It was a very mixed crowd with secular Israelis, modern orthodox, haredi Jews in long black coats and peyot (side-locks), and one or two Arab families.  There was a large bathroom building with showers, and another large building next to a grilling area and fire pit area.  The building had two large industrial refrigerators, like the ones at stores that hold the cold drinks for sale. There also was an industrial sized gas stove that was big enough for an industrial sized wok.   They didn’t have a separate fire bit at each campsite like in the US – instead, there was a common area where people could make fires if they wanted in metal barrels which had been cut in half. 

We didn’t have our huge Yeti cooler that we’d used camping in the US where we’d bring everything we were planning to eat for the entire weekend with us from home.  Instead, after we were all set up, I and the dad from the other family drove about 15-20 minutes to a grocery store in one of the small towns in the mountains and bought a bunch of meat to grill – hot dogs, kabobs, hamburgers and some small steak medallions, also vegetables, potatoes and bread.  We had brought a small cooler bag with us with salad stuff (and eggs for breakfast the next morning.)  Our friends had brought a cheap, almost disposable (which they actually just left there afterward for anyone else to use) charcoal grill (Israelis love to grill).  We set up the grill (just a metal box on folding legs), dumped in the charcoal, added several lighter stick things (they apparently don’t have lighter fluid here; against the law to have flammable liquids for sale, I was told), borrowed a lighter from they guy setting up his grill next to us (who in turn had borrowed it from the family around the corner 😀,) and we were off and running!  

While he tended the grill, I and my kids started the campfire.  We used one of the half – barrels.  There already was a big pile of wood – large branches, cut up logs, etc, and another pile of plywood pieces to be used in the fires.  Very convenient.  We gathered some small twigs to make a little “log cabin” and a bunch of dried pine needles for kindling, then borrowed the same lighter again (easier than the matches we’d brought with us), and we had a great campfire going in no time!  As we were getting it going, a random guy came over and asked if he could use our fire to cook his potatoes that he had just wrapped in foil.  I said, sure, why not?  So he had his potatoes on one side of the barrel, and I made sure to put ours (we had a mix of regular and sweet-potatoes) all on the other side.  So there we were, a bunch of random israeli families of all stripes grilling together at this campsite. Then, we brought the food back to where our tents were.  Our friends had brought some collapsible tables that we used, and there were also the typical wooden picnic tables at each campsite. While we were eating we just left the fire in the barrel for other people to use. Then after dinner we went back to the fire, which was just embers by then, added a few more medium sized branches to quickly get it going again, and roasted marshmallows and made s’mores. All in all it was a great evening.  

It was a bit hotter than we expected at night – the breeze which had been so nice during the day died down and made it hard for everyone to sleep.  We had tentatively planned on two nights but after the kids didn’t sleep much that night, decided to break camp after just one night, and plan another adventure a little later in the season when it cools down a bit.  That morning as I was just getting things organized in the tent, and going back and forth in my mind if I should bother davening (praying) shacharit (morning prayers) with my talit and t’fillin that I had brought, (the family we were with wasn’t the “davening type” so it would’ve been just me.  not that there’s anything wrong with that; honestly I love doing the prayers outside when camping); just then some rando walked up to our tent (yeah – rando.  that means “a random guy” according to my kids 😀 –  and yeah, that might just be the first term i actually used that i learnt from my kids.) and asked if I could help out with the minyan a few tents over.  Not one to disappoint, I sprang into action, grabbed my talit and t’fillin and headed over.  And wouldn’t you know it, I was actually the tenth person; just made the minyan so the one guy who needed could say kaddish.  So I got to do my prayers in the outdoors after all.  Then I walked back to our tent where the coffee was already hot and the camp eggs were cooking.  All in all it was a great time.  And, we got to use our new “car bag” – a cheap collapsable reinforced roof-top bag to carry all the gear that wouldn’t fit our mini citroen 7 passenger car.